Earning the respect from their peers such as Funeral
For A Friend and Taking Back Sunday, Fightstar are set to unleash one of
the most widely anticipated albums of 2006 on March 6th. Produced by Colin
Richardson who'd previously worked with Machinehead the album should put
the nail in the coffin of any of the doubters that have more often than
not converted to fans on the bands live shows and festival appearances.
Designer Magazine caught up with Charlie, Omar, Al and Dan backstage at
the Manchester Academy 2 show earlier in the year to chat about the albums
progress, why they weren't prepared to spoof Cradle Of Filth and the difference
of playing to 800 people instead of 20000.

Q: This is your second full tour of the UK and it must
be a different experience where people have had chance to listen to the
music rather go along to watch Fightstar because of your previous life?Charlie: It's been really good out on the road
with Armor. It's cool man getting out to these bigger venues and even though
they're bigger venues they're still small venues if you know what I mean.
You've still got that intimate crowd, but it's a much better sound system.

Alex: We're still proving ourselves on this tour
because a lot of people still haven't heard us.

Charlie: The cool thing is a people have heard
the record now so people actually know the songs. A lot of people come
to our shows not want to like it and by the end of it they're loving it.
It's almost like they're pissed off for liking it (laughs)

Q: It must be weird for you Charlie, from going to
playing to 20,000 people a night to being about this far from the crowd?Charlie: Its good man. It's what I prefer because
I can see everyone's face. We did Give It A Name at Alexandra Palace and
you feel quite disconnected from the crowd because your so far away, when
you're doing these smaller clubs you're right up in their faces.

Q: You're lined up to play all the festivals this summer.
Are you playing outside the UK at all?Charlie: We've got Summer Sonic in Japan and then
we're going to America in September cos we're releasing through an independent
called Deep Elm Records, they're my favourite record company.

Q: Do you guys wanna introduce yourself and what you've
done previous to Fightstar?Omar: I'm the drummer in Fightstar and i've been
in quite a few bands, but nothing that's kicked off quite like Fightstar.
Just generally playing the circuit in London and a couple of toilet tours
in a back of a transit. I've also produced a lot of bands as well prior
to Fightstar.

Alex: Basically I went to Uni and dropped out after
a year.

Charlie: Al does some cool solo stuff man like
Jeff Buckley style. That's how I first heard of Al

Alex: How did I go from Jeff Buckley to this? I've
always loved this style of music and wanted to be in a band rather than
doing it solo.

Dan: Same as Omar really. I've played in a lot
of bands since I was about 11, we did a few EPs and demos with death metal
and nu-metal bands. Then I gave it up to do the video games programming
for a few years and somehow got into video production which I ended up
doing for a few bands

Q: How did you from playing in bands to just sitting
at a computer?Dan: It's all the same vibe - just pure creativity.
It's the same mechanism and the same part of your brain that does it all.
It's the same with filming as well except there's a bit more interaction

Q: If Fightstar put together their own festival, who
would be on the line-up?Charlie: I'd really want this festival to be a
dream festival where you'd have Mono and Explosions In The Sky and you'd
get to sit in a massage chair while you watch it. It would be so soothing
while you listen to stuff like Explosions In The Sky....If it wasn't just
post rock, Nirvana and Deftones on the same bill would be awesome

Q: The video and artwork for "Paint Your Target" caused
some controversy....as someone who's seen both we have to ask why?Omar: We knew what we were doing with the video.
We knew it was going to be on the borderline, but we made sure it was on
the borderline, not beyond the borderline. A certain company, that I won't
go into but they own most of the music channels, decided they weren't going
to play it which basically put us in the predicament that we weren't getting
the airplay we should potentially be getting.

What we had to was record another video and the videos
cool. It's a performance video. But the original concept was all of our
babies and we were really really proud of it, so it was a bit of a knock
back.

Charlie: What does piss me off is they played Green
Day's video and it's got tanks, guns, bullets being fired in it.

Omar: I mean where do you draw the line. Our video
hasn't got guns in it, that was one thing we were adamant about cos it
wasn't about guns or gun crime. It was about a childs mind and innocence
and where does war come from? Were showing that side of it and Green Day
are showing the complete other side of it which is much more harrowing.

Alex: It's a sign of the times. Rock n roll is
no longer the platform for revolution that it used to be and that power
that rock bands used to have in the 60s and 70s and the spirit of revolution
is essentially being crushed by capitalism in its various forms. But if
you wanna be successful in this business you have to play by certain rules.

Q: Perhaps you should have gone out there and done
a spoof of a Cradle Of Filth video?Omar: Exactly. The thing is there are videos that
go out to go get that. At the end of the day it was just one guy that didn't
like it, but that one guy owns the majority of the stations. It's amazing
how one guy can f**k so much up

Charlie: Our record label have been like a big
indie to us. We said can we go up to Al's place and write the album, we
came back with us, they asked us who we wanted as producer and we said
Colin Richardson so they put the call in. The thing is if you respect your
record label they'll respect you.

Omar: It doesn't have to be oh my god the major
label are f**king me over all the time. It's not always like that

Charlie: I think a lot of bands go into major labels
with this thing we've got to say no to everything. What the most important
part is making the music you wanna make, everything else is just stuff
that comes with being in a band.

Q: Who been the best band you've toured with?Charlie: Taking Back Sunday and Armor For Sleep
have been awesome. My brothers band Brigade and also Laruso. Touring with
friends is so good because you're just partying all the time. We get to
choose every band we tour with when we're headlining

Q: And what can we expect from the album?Charlie: If you listen to the EP, "Paint Your
Target" is not really a representation of the sound of the album. On the
album there's really heavy stuff and completely chilled out stuff.

Omar: People have said we sound like Biffy Clyro
and there is elements of that, but I don't think it's a straight comparison.

Charlie: So many different people say so many bands
sound like us and some bands get pissed off when you say you're this genre
or whatever, but music is open to anybody else's interpretation. At the
end of the day all the tags emo or hardcore just mean rock, it's a form
of music. The ultimate aim is to make your own band your favourite band
because you can write the music that you love.

Q: Do you think when the album comes out, you'll get
comparisons like this band sounds like FightstarOmar: That would be very strange for bands to
be compared to Fightstar

Charlie: People do say imitation is the biggest
form of flattery. If we influence another band to write songs that would
be f**king awesome.